


We May Fall Then Stumble Upon A Carousel

by summerstorm



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Break Up, Community: cliche_bingo, M/M, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-16
Updated: 2009-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about sleeping, lots and lots of sleeping—the kind that's had and the kind that's missed. (Or: Kris likes to sleep in Adam's bed. Things progress from there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We May Fall Then Stumble Upon A Carousel

**Author's Note:**

> For my [](http://community.livejournal.com/cliche_bingo/profile)[**cliche_bingo**](http://community.livejournal.com/cliche_bingo/) "exhaustion" square. Thank you thank you thank you to annemari and fly_meaway for hand-holding and betaing and being absolute sweethearts—and to fly_meaway in particular for providing me with a title. My jam for writing this was Imogen Heap's [Can't Take It In](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hhmzjwignmq), and the title is from Tori Amos's [Sleeps With Butterflies](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2ynig00iodr).

It starts a couple of days before Lil and Anoop leave, when Kris is still rooming with Adam, weeks before they even make plans to get over their laziness—to flip a coin or something and have one of them move his stuff to another room. It's still light outside and Kris is holding his guitar, but he's so beat he's blanking out on what he intended to do with it. Adam's sprawled on his bed listening to some demo a friend Kris didn't catch the name of sent him when he says, wide-eyed, looking at Kris, "This is _good_."

Kris raises an eyebrow, says, "That's a lot of faith you have in your friends."

"No," Adam replies with a breathy laugh, "it's just their last demo was kind of terrible. It was totally overpowered by like, the sound of planes taking off."

"Maybe that's what they were going for," Kris points out, because you never know with these people.

"I don't think it was," says Adam, amused. "I mean, don't misunderstand me, I love experimental stuff like that, but this was actually _painful_. It was like waiting in line to file a luggage complaint."

Kris lifts an eyebrow and repeats, "Maybe that's what they were going for."

Adam chuckles and says, "No it wasn't," and then he's pulling a bud out of his ear and raising it and saying, "Seriously, it's _really_ good, come have a listen," and it's not like Kris has anything better that he feels physically capable of doing right now, so he just walks over, plops himself down on Adam's bed, takes the little earbud Adam's offering, and he lies back, settles in so the cable will reach both of them. 

One hour later it's dark, and he's still lying next to Adam in Adam's bed listening to Adam's iPod, and he realizes it wouldn't be that weird if he actually went to sleep now, but then he looks at the maybe five feet between his bed and Adam's, and the prospect of covering them feels about as appealing as swimming his way to Japan. So he stretches and yawns, eloquent, and says, "I don't feel capable of walking over to my bed."

"Right," Adam replies incredulously.

"You don't mind if I stay here," Kris states lazily, his breath evening out the way it does when his eyelids are about to shut down of their own accord. Then he feebly adds, "Do you?"

Adam chuckles. "Well—"

"We're friends," Kris drawls, cutting him off. "I'm comfortable enough with my sexuality to share a bed with a gay guy. How about you?"

"I don't think it works that way, Allen."

"It does for me," Kris says, and snuggles his head into the pillow. Adam's shoulder is about two inches away from his nose, and he smells nice, inviting. It's nice to have a solid presence next to him, kind of like a flashlight if you're afraid of the dark, he imagines. He sleeps fine without Katy, but it's better when she's there, when he has someone to wrap an arm around, settle in against when the mattress feels like a desert landscape. He doesn't think Adam would mind if Kris did that either, though he doesn't intend to. Their friendship is good that way.

"I'm not gonna take it personally—" Adam begins, voice like a buzz, fading into the corners of Kris's brain.

Kris falls asleep.

When he wakes up, he's alone, and he assumes Adam moved him to his own bed at some point. He remembers Adam muttering something about personal space and sharing his bed with bitches or something—Kris is taking the high road there, not offended—but when he looks around, no, he's still in Adam's bed. Sunrise logic suggests that even though in normal circumstances Adam would probably be strong enough to carry him across a room—and sometimes Kris is really thankful he's married, because if he wasn't, if there wasn't a Katy, these thoughts would have him more than just raising an eyebrow at himself—and even though Adam seems to have all this crazy energy at night, being half asleep might keep him from trying, just a little bit, and Kris is suddenly kind of thankful he's still in one piece.

In Adam's bed.

He figures it should be weird, maybe, now that his basic brain functions have recovered, but it's really totally not. 

That's how it starts. 

*

It's not like Kris starts thinking he has unrestricted access to Adam's bed from just that one incident—sitting on it, yeah, though that goes for pretty much anyone who has access to their room in the first place, and they're roommates who actually get along, which elevates the privilege to maybe—to lying over the covers while fully clothed and not leaving like, your smell all over them. 

That's what Kris is thinking a week later when he decides it would be good to get thirty or forty minutes of sleep, rest his brain cells for a while.

It's not completely out of nowhere: he's been working on this arrangement for two days, he's having one of those days when he doesn't want his guitar to touch the floor, and he still thinks he can make some more progress before dusk, so he doesn't want to put it away yet either. His bed, which is already pretty crowded with notebooks and his laptop and an assortment of loose office supplies and cables, seems like the easiest place to leave it. When he lays it there, though, he barely has any place to sit, let alone take a nap without breaking something valuable, so he looks around and there's Adam's bed, half unmade, barely two steps away. It's not trespassing, it's just a nap, so he doesn't think about it and just covers that space and lies down. 

He kicks his shoes off, fumbles with the covers a bit so they won't cut off his circulation, and settles in.

A hand gently shakes him awake later—much later, he thinks when he tries to open his eyes, so much later that it's dark outside and the only light—the light hitting his retinae like a power truck—comes from Adam's bedside lamp. He tries to readjust his eyesight to the painfully electrical brightness, makes out the shape of Adam's torso when he looks up at him, a palm waving before his face.

"Kris," comes a whisper, ridiculously soft and—_nice_, really, makes him want to go back to sleep instantly. He tries to look over at his own bed, see if maybe magical elves have come and put everything away, but—no, it's still all—_God_. He doesn't have the strength to stand up. He barely has the strength to keep his neck turned like this. "Kris," Adam says again, "you gotta get out of my bed."

"Hmmph," Kris groans, and buries his face back in the pillow. It's—he breathes it in, and it's weird, it smells—different. Indistinct, now, and it's more the surprise that Kris expected it to smell more like—more like Adam, he assumes, that hits him. Because right now that scent's barely a hint, gone and replaced with a vague trail of Kris's shampoo and nothing, probably because he took a shower about an hour before he decided to take a nap, and he's been lying there for that long and the pillow smells pretty much like his own bed and it's just—not as appealing, but comfortable.

He opens his eyes again when he feels Adam's weight shift off the mattress, watches him walk over to the bathroom, chuckling softly. He kind of swaggers a little, somewhat royally, and Kris wishes he'd gotten a better look at him when he left earlier tonight, because it's actually rare for Adam to give off that sense of boldness he does on camera when there's no public element to the situation. His jeans are ridiculously tight, but that's not unusual—it just makes Kris notice his ass, from a completely detached perspective, and the flash of sweaty skin when Adam pulls his shirt off over his head. It might be even later than Kris thought it was, and that whole confidence thing may just be leftover drunkenness, but it's still nice to behold—comforting, somehow—and then Kris's breath is evening out and his lids are shutting and he's in that place between awareness and being out like a light again.

The sway of the mattress barely registers in his brain a few minutes later, the covers gliding under and over him when Adam lies down, smelling like—like Adam, really, and traces of things—of alcohol, of brandless laundry soap from the t-shirt he's wearing—Kris is lying face down but Adam's leg brushes against his for a second, and Adam's actually wearing pajama pants, which is—normal, really, when someone you're not sleeping with is sleeping in your bed, but it's still oddly comforting that he's not just wearing a t-shirt and boxers like he usually does, that he changed into them in the bathroom, that he's not even trying to make Kris deal with the mess in his bed, that Adam's considerate like that to someone who's taking up half his bed for no reason. 

It's not something Kris wants to make a habit out of. It just _happens_.

*

After they make the top four Allison's kind of ecstatic all the time, wears them down like crazy, and Matt tries to make the most of his last full-time night with them and the last half day in the mansion and it's all a rush, so much so that the first day without him they spend most of the evening lying around in the living room watching, as a way to laze around and still pacify Allison's need for energy-wasting fun, crappy horror flicks. Adam gets into it for a while, but once the third one rolls around he's not even pretending to be paying attention anymore, and every few minutes his head hits Kris's shoulder for a few seconds before he tries to shake off the drowsiness and come back to life.

At some point Allison's mom makes an appearance and drags her to bed, and Kris offers to take out the DVD and switch off the TV, since apparently he's the last one able to stand, but Danny yawns and says he wants to finish watching, and Kris raises an eyebrow, but says okay. There are maybe twenty minutes left, it's not a big deal.

Kris gets on his feet and heads over to the kitchen for a snack, and when he comes back with a bottle of water Adam's dozed off again, except this time he's not waking up—he's more lying than sitting now, with no Kris to keep him from plunging face first into the couch, and his eyes are shut, breath shallow, mouth parted slightly like it only does when his sleep is nowhere near profound.

Kris releases a couple of fingers from his grip on the bottle to tap Adam's shoulder, and Adam stirs a bit, blinks up at him.

"Your bed's upstairs," Kris says, and Adam tilts his eyebrows at him. While Adam gathers the energy to stand, Danny looks back at them and Kris tells him, "I'm gonna take him to bed," and he doesn't realize it sounds a bit off until the words leave his mouth. Danny makes a face before remembering niceness is his shtick and giving Kris a fake smile, and Kris contemplates explaining himself, but it's not the kind of thing that should grant a grimace, so he doesn't bother. It's not that he hates Danny's guts, because he doesn't, but he's annoyed by him most of the time, so there's a karmic sort of satisfaction in messing with his head. Retribution. So Kris smirks instead and lets Danny think what he will—hopefully something that turns his stomach a little.

He really only intends to walk Adam up to their room and leave him somewhere he won't provide himself with a fatal hit to the head, because that's what you do when someone's taking forever to figure out how to work his own feet, but he ends up dragging back the covers and sitting down so Adam won't stay on the edge of the mattress and topple over, and then it doesn't seem like a good idea to let him go to sleep wearing that belt and those jeans, so he attempts to take them off, and Adam rouses and bats his hands away, which Kris is kind of thankful for, because it's good they have boundaries, for one thing, and because he was just thinking he had no idea how to undo that buckle.

Still half asleep, Adam rolls over and leaves the half of his bed Kris is sitting on vacant. He doesn't make a move to pull the covers back over it, abandons them forming a diagonal line from where they reach his lower back, like he's expecting company, and when Kris looks over at his bed he realizes it's too messy to be comfortable. For whatever reason, Kris doesn't feel weird at all about the fact that Adam's _welcoming_ him, doesn't feel weird about Adam's apparent belief that an unmade bed is reason enough for them to share another, and the idea of going back downstairs is unappealing at best, so he just—switches off the light, takes off his shoes and his jeans, and crawls in.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, pretty vaguely, he thinks he should maybe take real, actual rational notice of the way that, when Adam shifts as Kris is settling, the back of Adam's hand somehow manages to brush Kris's side from knee to rib, gentle and accidental and fluttery, and instead of feeling like he's having his personal space invaded Kris just finds the gesture cozy, warming, and wishes he had a good excuse to keep Adam's hand a solid presence on his arm or his back as he falls asleep. 

He takes what he can get, though, and is glad that this time, for some meaning of the word "essentially", the one at fault is actually Adam.

*

He seriously never means to make a habit of—literally—sleeping with Adam at all. He doesn't wake up one morning and think his mission for the day should be shunning his own perfectly functional bed to spend the night in Adam's on completely avoidable grounds. As a matter of fact, the issue crosses his mind a couple of times in the opposite direction—makes him wonder if maybe he should keep it in mind, try to _avoid_ it. But it seems harmless, and not a big deal, and by now there's no way the universe hasn't run out of random coincidences to make it happen, so he lets it go.

He lets it go to the extent that whenever Adam goes out by himself for the night, Kris uses his own bed as a storage room and wakes up with Adam plastered to his back, or to Adam's weight shifting off the mattress, or halfway to occupying the warm spot Adam's left next to him. Then he puts so much work into his song he totally forgets it's not exactly _normal_ for two guys to share a bed for completely platonic reasons and just climbs in and falls face first on the pillow and drapes an arm over Adam's waist and wakes up with that arm where Adam's waist _should_ be, if Adam hadn't already gotten up, and he feels a pang of yearning, sort of, like missing a leg you don't have, except without the traumatic aspect.

A few days later, Danny manages to piss him off pretty badly during the dress rehearsal for their duet and once Kris is done putting things away in his room, he goes down to the living room and finds Adam lying on a couch and Danny trying to maintain some kind of conversation with him, so Kris doesn't even think about it and just walks over and tells Adam to make room for him. Adam complies easily, and Kris lies down next to him, and lying next to Adam on that couch is lying really, really close to him, practically in his arms, and Danny looks so repulsed when Adam's hand comes to rest lightly on Kris's hip that Kris suddenly feels every last bit of anger fade, because this? This is hilarious.

He doesn't laugh, though; he just yawns, long and comfortable, and says, looking at no one in particular, "If you fall asleep and crush me, keep in mind my ghost will come back to haunt you," and stretches and finds a nice angle of Adam's chest to snuggle his head in and just _breathes_.

He's vaguely aware of Adam motioning with his fingers at Danny over Kris's head, and he really doesn't care what Adam's trying to convey because Adam put on this shirt right after rehearsal and it's ridiculous how good it smells, the scent distinct and varied but so recognizably _Adam_ that it sends him to sleep in the span of thirty seconds even though he didn't actually mean to doze off at all with this stunt.

When he wakes up a short while later Adam's gone, but the fabric still smells like him, and Kris breathes in and moans out of unwillingness to get up. He should maybe worry about the fact that he didn't plan to fall asleep in the first place, but at this point he's lucky he can get such good rest this easily, considering how little time they all have to catch up on sleep, so it would actually do more bad than good to address the situation. 

Kris is expecting to go home this week, anyway, so he takes the chance to pack up his side of the room and if he stays, he can just move into the bedroom across the hall, and at least things will be orderly and tidy again. Danny walks by before he begins—maybe five minutes early, when Kris is still negotiating how to get started, doesn't really want to take in the amount of work he's going to have to do—and looks around and says,

"Where do you even _sleep_?"

like he's actually confused, and then Kris follows his gaze and can see why. So he sucks on his lip first, because Jesus, swimming his way to Japan does sound more appealing than putting away all his crap at this point, and then he lets go with a pop and says, "You don't wanna know". 

Danny looks confused for a second, then seems to decide that no, he really doesn't, and turns around to leave. 

Kris writes it off—it's not like there's room in his brain for anything other than freaking out about _how_ he's going to pack everything up, and after that his priorities jump straight to making sure _Heartless_ rocks, and that's about everything he has time to think about before the show, so he's actually surprised when he collapses on Adam's bed after the show and Adam tries to shake him awake and says,

"Don't you think maybe we shouldn't sleep in the same bed?" 

and actually has the nerve to sound vaguely guilty about it. It feels like the middle of a conversation that they haven't even started, and Kris wonders, fleetingly, if Danny has talked to him. It's a flash, the grimace and that sort of disapproval thing Danny does so often Kris barely even takes notice of it anymore, and that's—that's the only explanation he can come up with for this nonsense.

"Nah, I'm good," Kris drawls, and grabs Adam's wrist and pulls him down but Adam keeps his distances and Kris feels horrible when he wakes up and sees Adam's skin all marked up by the sheets and notices him constantly cracking his muscles along the day like he's sore, like he's kept to his side of the bed all night long, and that's not even close to what Kris ever wanted, so he just moves. He moves into the other room and the following night he sleeps in the other room and he manages—he spends two hours on the phone with Katy first, but he nods off eventually, and when he wakes up he's on the floor, wrapped up in covers, on the opposite side to the one he'd fallen asleep on. 

Kris rolls around a fair bit in his sleep, always has, but even this is a stretch for him, and he wonders if there's something to Adam's claim that he's missing—if this isn't as harmless as he originally thought it to be. He doesn't wake up on the floor again, which is good, but there's another incident before the finals, one that actually freaks him out in the morning, when his senses aren't impaired by drowsiness. 

There's no build-up, actually, just he's left the door open because the only other person in the house is Adam, and he's really at that horrible point where he is too tired to jerk off, but Adam—Adam obviously isn't. Apparently what Adam's tiredness does is make him forget to muffle the noise.

The first few moans are vague, so low Kris can tell himself it's a bird or some tree moving or whatever, but then there's a groan, a groan with fully fleshed-out _vowels_ in it, and that's—that's Adam, for sure, and Kris shuts his eyes tight and tries not to think about it. Tries not to think about it because when he does, he finds himself wanting to _smell_ him, wanting to walk over there and wrap himself around him, take a lungful of that scent—sweat and sex and sleep and Adam—and he's suddenly torn between horniness and somnolence and that—that's definitely more than a little weird. He manages to will down his hard-on by thinking of his wedding day, and he's met with something overfilling his insides, something like a bitter bliss smoothie, good for your eight-year-old palate but terrible in the long term for your teeth.

Everything else, though? Everything else is fine. He plays _Ain't No Sunshine_ for Adam a million and one times, and Adam gives him input and smiles and is the complete opposite of what the song feels like, and Kris keeps _looking_ at him, watching him—not in a creepy stalker way, but when Adam knows Kris is watching, when Adam's eating or talking or singing or—and Kris feels fine about it all, nothing to worry about.

It's just the tiredness that gets to him sometimes, that's all.

*

The final is ridiculous. Amazing and shocking and _ridiculous_. 

It's morning when they stumble back into the mansion, to pack, technically, to get it all over with, to put an end to their stay here, and Kris keeps playing over the one single piece of advice David Cook offered him in his head, _sleep sleep sleep sleep_, like he wouldn't be wishing he could even if no one else had said a word about it. He managed to sneak in a forty-minute nap in between parties and press, but it was completely and utterly useless, getting waken up every five minutes by someone walking into the room, and now he's back in the mansion and Adam walks in to ask after something he can't find and Kris just—Kris _needs_ rest, and it's the only thing he can think of that will provide him with exactly that.

"I think I should take a nap," is what he opens with.

"So you haven't seen it?" Adam asks, looking around. Adam's wired. Adam won't collapse if he pulls an all-nighter or two, but he's fidgety, and Kris is pretty sure there's a part of this that's totally doing Adam a favor, too, even if Adam's not as stupidly needy. 

"No," Kris says, "I don't think, but, um. I know this is kinda weird, and we never really talked about it, so it's even weirder now, but I really need to sleep. And you're like—I sleep better with someone around."

"So pack up and go to Katy," Adam says, and it's obvious to Kris that he's misunderstanding him on purpose.

"Don't make me say it," Kris pleads.

Adam looks at him—looks him up and down, actually, probably taking in the way Kris's legs pretty much refuse to exist at this point—and then he's lying on Kris's bed and holding out his hand and Kris is taking it and Kris just—doesn't even bother to keep to his side or anything, because this isn't Adam's bed and a bed that isn't Adam's won't magically smell like him just because Adam's been on it for four seconds, so he just rests his head on Adam's chest and feels him inhale and exhale under his chin and is out like a light before he has time to say thanks.

Adam's still asleep underneath him when Kris opens his eyes after four, five hours—it seems like neither one of them has moved for a single second, but Kris doesn't feel sore, he just feels _awake_, ready to deal with everything. Adam stirs when Kris takes his weight off his chest, and Kris props himself up on an elbow, keeps his eyes on Adam. It's not something he's done before, watching Adam rouse like this, watching the way his muscles come around like wires untwisting into consciousness, and Kris wraps himself around him again, for no reason other than to make sure he doesn't weird Adam out just by staring. 

Except it backfires, because suddenly Adam's neck is against Kris's lips, and that doesn't necessarily make things awkward, but it does make Kris mouth over it, place gentle kisses over his jaw before he realizes what he's doing and retreats. 

Adam doesn't seem to notice, though, or if he does he's good at pretending he hasn't, and then their phones are ringing like crazy and there's like four cars waiting outside and their schedule is completely packed and there's no time for Kris to freak out, because it's good, and it's not going anywhere, and it's good, and they're good, and he's not running low on rest. 

*

Katy doesn't think it's weird at all.

Yeah, Kris doesn't tell her _everything_, but he does tell her about the whole sleeping in Adam's bed thing, as an afterthought, like _hey, there's also this thing I'm not sure you'll like, but it's totally not important at all, so you shouldn't worry_, and she doesn't. She lifts an eyebrow and says, "On a scale of cuddling to cadaver, where would you place your sleeping arrangements, exactly?" She's amused, which is a good sign—she's not accusing, she's just taking it in, detached, because she's met Adam and she knows what he's like. She knows he wouldn't hurt her, and it makes Kris feel like crap, because Adam _really_ wouldn't do that, but Kris has maybe thought about it more than once. 

"Somewhere in the middle?" he ventures. "I don't know."

"Are you all cuddled out?" she asks, and he frowns and she walks up to where he's sitting on their bed back in Conway, in the middle of a bunch of boxes now that Katy's thinking of moving to Hollywood, all that luggage ready to do whatever they want with it, and she straddles him and pulls her hair back in a ponytail and rolls her hips like she means it.

Kris kisses her, drags her lower lip down, slides his tongue along the ridge of her teeth and points out, "This isn't cuddling," and Katy laughs and says, without any sort of questioning inflection, "Isn't the best sex supposed to feel like holding hands," and the mattress is new and weird, but Katy's the same Katy she's always been, and she's the coolest wife in the world, but he doesn't miss her. 

He didn't miss her, and he doesn't miss her now, not retroactively, not in any way. He snuggles his head in her hair and she smells like soap and perfume and make-up, just the right amount of each, nothing overwhelming, but still Kris wants—thinks of Adam and wants that, wants to run his nose all over his body like Katy ran her mouth all over him just now, and he _sleeps_, hour after hour, but it's not as revitalizing as he knows it can be, as it was after the Idol finals.

Katy's fantastic, she is, and she's great and solid and small and that's a good thing, Kris doesn't suddenly want a big strong man to hold him or anything ridiculous like that. It's not about that—it's just Katy's not what's familiar, Katy's what's different now, Katy's the change rather than the stable thing, and he wants to go back. He wants to go back and keep kissing Adam's jaw and not stop when Adam opens his eyes.

He groans into the mattress, while Katy's already in the shower, because suddenly this—this with the financial security and the living his dream and having a record deal and going on tour and being married and everything, _everything_ being perfect—this might just be the most screwed-up situation Kris has ever been in, and he has no idea how to get out of it.

*

Tour rehearsals have the top ten from the season dropping by randomly as flies at first, at intervals Kris can't really make much sense of, but then he's a musician and not an event organizer. Once they're all in the same place they go clubbing around LA, and it reminds Kris how little this is his scene, regardless of how he feels about Katy or Adam or anyone else. It's fun, though, and he gets to his hotel pretty late, and sleep deprivation kicks in soon enough, when he least expects it. The shadows under his eyes are so big he thinks Adam's almost offered to put make-up on them twice already, except he's stopped himself before the words came out, which is kind of admirable, though Kris really can't tell what he would have said to that, and it's kind of a shame he doesn't find out. 

Then again, despite the sleep deprivation, Kris has managed to keep himself from apologizing to Adam about the whole thing during the show just because Adam told a Rolling Stone editor he thought Kris was attractive, so there's that. It's not like Kris actually feels sorry, though, because if it was true to the extent the media's been talking it up to, Kris is pretty sure Adam would have _said_ something, or done something—so it's not so much a gut reaction as a _pleasantry_ dying to come out. Like when you forget to thank someone even though they already know you appreciate whatever they've done. That's how Kris feels about it.

There's also the part where—it's not like Kris ever thought it wasn't plausible for Adam to return his feelings—not the sniffing instincts, hopefully, but the general interest past their friendship—and Kris is still married, and he's trying not to think about that, trying not to figure out how to approach it because if he does, his brain's not on top of its game enough that he'll be able to hold himself back, and approaching the situation without any restrictions like that would be a terrible, terrible idea.

Except it's so hard to care. 

He starts missing Katy, _literally_ missing her—missing her calls and their lunch dates, not being able to make it to anything, and it's not his fault, and it's not her fault either, that they keep missing each other, but they do, and where Katy's far Adam's _right there_, a thigh to brush against and an elbow to hold onto and it's—it's _nothing_, technically, it's just _good_. 

When it happens, he's so deep in denial—plus up to his neck in arrangement work and rehearsing and doing useless press and trying to be nice to the people who ask the same generic questions over and over instead of googling them and not making him waste time that could be going into that wall he's hit on the arrangement of _Bright Lights_—he can honestly say he doesn't expect it.

He takes Katy to lunch, first, and she tells him he seems really out of it, and he holds her hand with much less warmth than he thinks he should and explains he's just running low on sleep, and she's a sweetheart and tells him to get some rest in any way he can, even if that means climbing on Adam like a monkey until he complies to Kris's wishes and morphs himself into a baby blanket.

Kris would feel bad, but he's entirely too exhausted to care about anything. His attention span's so short at this point that it takes him eight tries to get the full version of _Bright Lights_ right in one go and by then Adam's forgone waiting for him outside and is half leaning on the piano, balancing a water bottle on his little finger and squinting at Kris like he's playing this badly because there's a bug crawling up his cheek or something.

There isn't a bug anywhere near his cheek, Kris checked. There's just crankiness, and sleep deprivation, and Adam towering over him like that, so close Kris could just stop playing and reach out to touch him and he needs more water, so he stands up to get some and decides against it halfway through, because if he takes a sip now he's going to interrupt the song a million times to drink more, and if he drinks more than that he'll have to go pee before he gets a scar he can talk about, and he refuses to leave this thing unfinished. 

When, empty-handed, he takes the two steps back to the piano, Adam's thighs are up against the keys, some of which Kris might actually want to use, and Adam's holding out _his_ water, fingers first, and Kris just—Kris just walks in between his thighs and settles in. Loses his nerve. Cups Adam's fingers around the plastic bottle with his hand and looks down, at Adam's chest, nowhere in particular. Breathes in. 

His head moves forward, and Adam's head moves back at the same time, and then Adam's other hand's on the back of Kris's neck and Adam's tilting Kris's head up and looking at him, really looking at him, and Kris is just—_breathing_—lips parted, eyes wide—taking in the proximity of Adam's mouth, of Adam's breath warm against his nose, so close he could—

And then Adam's kissing him.

Adam's lips are on Kris's and his tongue's darting out and invading Kris's mouth and since Adam's not even trying to be coy or slow or _appropriate_, Kris doesn't bother acting blasé about it either—he doesn't think he could, even if he wanted to. He barely has a moment to register the sound of heavy plastic hitting the floor before he feels Adam's hand creeping up his back, under his shirt. That hand—big and firm and purposeful—steadies him, draws him closer, spreads heat up his shoulder blades, and Kris just tips his head back and allows—encourages—Adam to take control of the scene, to take control of Kris's life if he wants to, to devour his mouth, and holds onto the edge of the piano, lets his weight fall forward, fall into the kiss.

He doesn't even notice Adam's hand gliding down his side until it comes to rest on his waist, closer to his belly than to his back, and there's a—a whimper, and Kris doesn't realize it came from his own throat until the weightlessness makes his hands slide off the edge of the piano and onto the keys—making this loud, clinking, awful noise—accidentally bringing the momentum to a halt.

Adam pulls away until Kris stops following, until he's far enough away for his lips to let go of Kris's with the most beautifully, painfully ridiculous wet sound Kris has ever heard, and then Adam coughs and blinks and mutters, "I'm so sorry," frowning with genuine concern, and Kris shakes his head and opens his mouth to talk but no words are coming out, no freaking words come out at all, no _what for_ or _you shouldn't be_ or _it's my fault, it's totally my fault_. He's thinking them, but he's not _saying_ them, and then Adam's sliding off the piano, out of Kris's personal space, and Kris sits back on the stool gracelessly to accommodate him and Adam coughs and motions towards the door and Kris nods, shaky, and Adam leaves.

_Bright Lights_ comes around after that, but it's the kind of achievement Kris would gladly go back in time to mess up. 

*

He doesn't go back in time because it's not possible, obviously, but Adam does well enough acting like he has, which takes a remarkable burden off Kris's chest—it shouldn't have happened, not like that, and they're both to blame but it's also not the time to talk about it, not right now, not to Adam. He's not the one Kris owes the biggest explanation to. 

A couple of days before they get on that stupid cramped tour bus, he stays in with Katy, has breakfast with her, makes lunch for her, has lunch with her. Then they have coffee, and Kris realizes that, in the full maybe six hours they've spent together, they haven't covered anything. Nothing important, anyway. None of the things that are hanging over their heads. They've covered moving versus not moving to Hollywood (Katy's up for it; Katy would need to make a few trips back and forth from Conway, but she's okay with it; Katy doesn't sound convinced), and how they're going to see each other during the tour (Katy will come to visit when the mood strikes; Katy will tell him first; he'll pick her up wherever she wants to; they never get as far as sleeping arrangements, which Kris should find odd _when_ it happens, but it totally goes over his head at first), and how her family's doing and all. That's covered, but that's all—a given, really, except it doesn't sound like a given any longer. It sounds like pleasantries. 

Kris has a love/hate relationship with pleasantries.

"Are you okay?" Katy says, and it's another one of them, and Kris nods because it doesn't matter, but then she says, "Are _we_ okay?", so carefully that Kris can't take it for a rhetorical question. 

"Yeah," he lies. "I'm just tired."

"Not _that_ tired," Katy says with a small smile. "You're not that tired. You're not sure about this. About us."

Kris grimaces. "It's not that," he says, and knows it's the wrong thing to say. The obvious lie. It's on his face and it's in his silence and it's in the fact that they haven't talked about whether they're going to be sleeping in the same bed when Katy comes to see him on tour. That's where the lie is. That's how Katy's seeing through him, and that's how Kris is seeing through himself.

"Kris," Katy starts. It sounds like the beginning of something that hurts. Something that should hurt. Kris braces himself for it. "Maybe this isn't the right thing. Maybe we should have waited."

"I wanted to marry you," Kris says, low, "soon as I could," which is true, and they both know it's true, and so Katy doesn't pay attention. As she shouldn't.

"Maybe we did the right thing, I don't know. I really don't know. I think we should try the other thing—I'm not saying that other thing's the right or the wrong one, just the other thing, the—the I go on with my life and you go on Idol and if we're meant to be together, we'll just meet again somewhere down the road."

"That's not—" Kris begins, but Katy shushes him.

"Don't feel bad," says Katy, because she's the most amazing girl on the planet, and she knows that's what she has to say. Knows that'll make both of them feel better. "I need this just as much as you do. I need to know what it's like there without you, and I can't know that if—I can't know that like this."

And then she takes a sip of her coffee and suddenly seems bigger than ever, more sophisticated. Unconsciously making Kris feel like a baby ogre. "Are you sure?" he asks. Katy nods shakily over the cup. "You'll call, right?"

"Yeah," Katy says. "We'll just—we're friends. If it works out, well, we'll just—we can push our wedding anniversary two months forward, have it in November. It'll be cold and we'll stay in wrapped up in blankets and it will be amazing. And if—if _this_ doesn't work out, I'm still your friend. I'll go see you, I wouldn't miss it," she says, and then bites her lip and adds, like she knows she shouldn't, like she doesn't want to acknowledge it, "I love you."

And he does—he does too, and this could be like anything else, like every time she's put her life on hold for him in the past year. Like every time he's put his life on hold for her. Except this time they're putting their holds on hold, and it seems right. It seems so right Kris isn't sure why she's not crying. She never cries when he expects her to. She always cries at things no one else would.

*

It's amazing to be on stage like that, is what Kris takes from the first show. It's amazing and he's so full of joy he could sleep for a week. He could sleep for a week on a real bed, anyway, because his bunk is like a bench when he's in the mood for deep, prolonged sleep, and the bus hits things sometimes, and he's still awake. 

He's not the only one. Everyone's awake, probably. At least everyone on this bus, which he realizes as he makes his way along the narrow corridor toward Adam's bunk. Not a single bout of steady breathing—mattresses squeaking, tossing and turning—though Kris thinks most of the other guys are just overexcited, not reenacting the princess and the pea.

Adam's sitting cross-legged on his bunk with his laptop out and lifts an eyebrow when Kris draws the curtain open. 

"Hey," Kris says, and Adam nods up at him. "Doing anything interesting?"

"Staring at the screen," Adam says, "I'm seeing triple." Kris chuckles and Adam explains, "I'm totally sober. High on life, if anything."

"You seem more low than high," Kris points out eloquently.

"Right," Adam muses, pursing his lips. "Can't sleep?"

Kris wrinkles his nose like he's been caught. "That obvious?"

"You only use me for my pillowness, Allen," Adam mock-whines, but he puts his laptop away anyway—he really was just staring at the screen, Kris notices—and sits back. 

Kris yawns, because yawning is convenient like that, and says, "That's 'cause it's the only thing you'll let me use you for," and then he manages to fit his body around Adam's and gets a whiff of leftover shaving cream and perfume and suddenly the bumps on the road are like freaking clouds under the... unicorn of sleep or whatever. He's drowsy. Adam smells so, so good, and his grey t-shirt's soft under Kris's hand and Adam's clearly trying to accommodate him, Kris thinks weakly—Adam's acting like a true human blanket, like he knows exactly how Kris rests best, and it hits Kris as he nods off into unconsciousness that, yeah, he actually probably does.

*

Some nights he actually sleeps in his own bunk, most of the time without Adam around him, but he still gets that fix, that bit of snuggling his head in Adam's shoulder, like a goodnight kiss except there's no date, no wining and no dining and no dancing nor romancing, but there's still that _hug_, Adam's arms trying to be casual but being familiar instead, and the smell of sleep and want imprinted on Kris's nose for the rest of the night.

It's scary how much Kris can get—how much Kris _gets_—from something that's faint like that.

*

Some other nights they get hotels and that's the best thing, the fact that they can just go out until their energy runs out and when they're back in one of their rooms Kris can take off his jeans and tangle his legs around Adam's and get the best sleep of his entire life. It's one of those nights that Kris tells Adam about Katy, about how they're pretending they're not married for the next couple of months, about how they're just seeing how it goes, and by the end he's not even sure he's making sense. The words walk over Adam's skin when he closes his eyes, and he can see them making their way towards his ear, stepping on places Kris wants to lick and bite. It's like he's dreaming already. 

"Wait," Adam says, trying to shake the sleepy feeling off himself, "wait, Kris, don't fall asleep on me right now."

"Hmmph," Kris mutters. He vaguely registers Adam calling him a bitch again, this time with feeling, and he's out, and they don't talk about it. They don't talk about it because Kris picked the best—or the worst—moment, and it would be weird if they brought it up again afterwards.

Later that day, Kris puts a hand on the small of Adam's back for no reason, no reason whatsoever other than he felt like it, and Adam flinches and it's not just _flinching_, it's something electrical that shoots through Kris's arm and down his spine, and suddenly everything's a freaking risk, every glance and every touch and every pretense that nothing's happened, that nothing's going on, and Adam snaps at Mike once and Kris can't even enjoy it because he knows Adam didn't, and then Megan starts dancing around them like she feels it's her duty to say something but she doesn't know what to open with, and Kris almost falls asleep during rehearsals twice, and once on Allison's shoulder during an interview.

Allison cracks an eyebrow at him and says, "You're fucking _gone_, Kris."

Kris snorts without real meaning and says, "You're too young to curse, I don't care that you're a rocker," at which Allison looks totally nonplussed, "and I don't even know what that means." Allison shakes her head like she's talking to a child, and she actually looks like she could talk to a child. She looks _serious_. It's freakish and makes Kris croak out, "What," which really doesn't help his case at all.

Allison rolls her eyes and says, "I can't spend the whole tour like this. Adam's _cranky_. Adam being cranky is funny, like, _once_, or _twice_, but I like him _cheery_, okay? I like my Adam cheerful and stupid, and he's not being cheerful right now. And you keep falling asleep on—on—on, like, _apples_. Apples are _not_ beds, Kris Allen, I don't care how... soft they seem or whatever. Apples are not Adam's arms, okay," and then the interviewer's back and Kris has no idea what she just said but yeah, this can't go on like this. When he sings _Ain't No Sunshine_ that night he can't make out half his own words, and he can't have the public not understand what he's saying. That's not an option, and the fact that he's freaking out about it like this after Allison compared Adam's limbs to fruit—hopefully not forbidden—makes it even worse.

He needs _sleep_. He needs sleep yesterday. He needs to go back in time and get sleep, and then go back in time and fix things. That's what Kris needs: a miracle. Alternatively, he'll take a proper bed and fourteen undisturbed hours.

*

"Actually I thought you sounded great," Matt tells him about _Ain't No Sunshine_, and Kris offers him a vague smile in thanks, not that Matt's looking. Matt's looking at his Twitter replies on his laptop, and Kris is holding his own laptop and doing nothing. Wishing that doing nothing could lead to putting that thing away and curling up around Adam and getting some decent sleep for once. The icons on his desktop are making shapes. He swears he sees _idiot_ at one point, and _wtf_ at another, when he tilts his head a little to the left.

He shuts the lid and leaves the laptop on the table before them, leans back, stares at the ceiling, the walls, whatever will let itself be stared at. Matt gets called into rehearsal after a few minutes and Kris lets gravity do its work and stretch him out over the couch. 

He thinks he falls asleep. Maybe he dreams he falls asleep. Maybe he dreams that he thinks he falls asleep, or that he falls asleep thinking of dreaming, and the whole thing is shallow and weird and he keeps waking up and not knowing whether he's woken up for real or he's just woken up in the middle of the dream but he's still asleep in real life. It's not new, but it's random and fast and more confusing than ever.

Adam needs to stop it with the tension. Maybe they should just have sex. Kris would be up for that. He should talk to Katy first, but it could—it _would_ work. It works itself into his dreams, for one, a detached shadow of a concept. The idea wraps itself around Kris's brain like an itchy quilt and pokes and prods at the corners, keeping his sleep unproductive, anxious. It's not new, either, but that—if that's why Adam's acting like this, all twitchy and miserable, Kris can—Kris _wants_, feels warmth spread over his body at the thought, in between nodding off and not, and there's a particular instant where he opens his eyes and his lids are heavy and he _sees_ Adam there, and he thinks he's still dreaming, but he's not—and it's nothing. It's just a light knock on the door and Adam saying they're all ready to go, they were looking for him, and if Kris just.

If Kris could just get on his feet and walk over there. There's just a few steps and Kris is there, dodging Adam and closing the door behind him, and then Adam'd be—is—then Adam's turning around to face him, to figure out why the door clicked, and Kris's hand would—does—slip under his shirt, hot, hot skin beneath Kris's fingers, cooling sweat below them, around Adam's hipbone, and so easy—so easy the shirt would slide off over Adam's head and the _haze_, and Adam getting the hint and backing Kris up against that closed door, cold where everything else is a blaze, cold inches away from where Adam's hands grab hold of Kris's hips and push him up, wrap Kris's legs around Adam and Kris can't _think_, can't—needs sleep, needs more contact, just _needs_—needs Adam to rush, to pop his fly open, stop fidgeting—needs Adam's tongue in his mouth, isn't sure why it isn't there yet—and then he's not sure why they're not, why he's not vertical, why Adam's arm's stretched between them and he's—

Shaking him. Shaking him awake, like he wasn't already. He blinks, he jerks his head. When he tries to move, his legs feel like molasses, heavy and restless, sticky and ninety percent numb, and Adam's avoiding his gaze and Kris feels like whatever this is has happened already, can't reconcile reality with—with _this_. With this desire to sleep, this desire to wrap Adam's arms around him and keep him there. Stay there. Miss the next proverbial train.

"Kris, come on, they're waiting for us," he hears Adam say, soft but firm, and then Kris is holding onto Adam's shoulder and resting his head on it and Adam's arm is around his waist and maybe it's because it's still all a muddly blur, maybe it's because Adam knows this is not—this is not something you ruin—but it feels okay, it feels like maple syrup. He nuzzles Adam's neck when they have to wait for the elevator, and can feel Adam's chest vibrate every time he does that, the laugh, low and silent and meaningful.

A whole side of his shirt smells like Adam when he gets to the bus, steps on someone's toes, stumbles over his bunk, manages to drop something on the floor and not distinguish what it is. 

He breathes in deep, and forgets he's on a bumpy road to Georgia, forgets he's on a bumpy road at all.

*

He remembers the next morning, not just because the ride is surprisingly smooth, but because Katy calls him when he finishes rehearsing the Killers song, and all the bumps that weren't on the road sprout up from his throat. "Hey," he says, coughing. "You're coming tonight, right?"

Katy sounds like she's trying to figure out what to say, which means she _doesn't_ sound like anything, because she's silent, and her breathing is normal, but Kris has known her forever, knows what she must look like right now. "I don't know," Katy says. "I'm all packed, but—I don't know. Should I?"

"Sure," Kris says, honestly. "I'd love to see you," he adds, also honestly, and wants to smack himself because no, that was a freaking pleasantry. Though he would like to see her. He likes to see her. He also dreads it right now. They stay silent for a few seconds—he assumes she's considering her options—and then he says, "Katy?"

"Hmm?" says Katy, either distracted or emotional—no, definitely distracted. The kind of distracted she gets when she finds a stain on her shoe or something. That works for him. That's a good thing. "Yeah?" she adds, and Kris realizes he has no idea how to say this. But he has to say this, because not saying it would be—not saying it is not an option. She needs to know about it if he wants them to stay positive about each other, whatever degree of positive that may turn out to be, and he does. He really does.

"This might sound a little—weird," he starts, "but, um. If I slept with Adam—like, actually _slept_ with him—if I did that, would you... leave me? For good?" There. There, that sounds way wronger than he intended it to. "I mean, not that it would be your fault, I'd totally understand, I just—need to know."

Katy doesn't reply immediately, but Kris isn't sure why he expected her to. 

"You have already, haven't you?" she says after a few seconds, letting out a soft, bored breath. She sounds tired, but there's an edge of—an edge of _sadness_ and disappointment that makes something in Kris's chest jump in pain.

"No," he says, except it's not entirely true. "I... I kissed him. A while ago." It sounds stupid. It sounds like he's back in middle school but at the same time it's groundbreaking, acknowledging that, saying the words out loud. He kissed Adam. They may pretend it didn't happen, but it did. Adam kissed him, and he kissed back for a while, and it wasn't an accident. He wasn't thinking, but it's not like you're supposed to—have feelings, if you have feelings you just have them. It doesn't matter how many circles you walk around them, the feelings will still be there when you get back to the starting point. It wasn't an accident. He just might have been able to avoid it for longer, maybe talk to Katy first. Maybe tell her right after it happened instead of _now_, past the point of no return. It's been so long, though, so long now. Such a long time coming. Kris isn't sure it would have made a difference, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. 

"Oh, God," Katy whispers slowly, the words close to a vowelless groan, and Kris can see her face, can picture a grimace on it. Knows he's hurting her, but can't go back in time to avoid it. Can't go back in time and get some sleep _in his own bed_ and think things through and make a real choice—not this scared, halfway-there bullshit—be an _adult_ about it. But he also needs to stop thinking about traveling in time, because it's not—it's not a possibility, and he needs to stop avoiding the real ones. "It's not because I'm not there, is it?"

"No," Kris says, maybe a little too quickly, but Katy's breath seems to even out at that. Adam's not a replacement—you don't replace people like that—there isn't a hole in his life that he has to fill, there isn't a place where Katy should be, it's _different_—it's an entirely different pattern, requires entirely different things. "I miss you, but it's not your fault. This has been—it's been brewing for a while."

"Right," she says. Then, "I don't know. I mean, we're—" she muses, and seems to choke on her words for a second. "We're _friends_," she enunciates, "what would you—what _do_ you do with us being friends?"

He sleeps with Adam. That's what he does. "But we're not just—"

"Kris," Katy says, cutting him off. "Kris, I don't know what you want me to say here. Do you want me to say I'll divorce you? I don't know. If you have... feelings for him, if you're not in love with me anymore, it's f—it's not _fine_, but I can't do anything about it, just try to hold my head up high and make the most of it." She sighs. "This sounds stupid, but you've gotta know this: right now, it's not me, it's you."

Kris chuckles. "Okay. Yeah. I really shouldn't have asked you that."

"No, it's—" Katy begins, and stops. Then, "It's good to know. I guess. Better than not knowing." She takes a deep breath that resonates through the phone. "Okay, I'll see you—when I see you. Probably not today, but soon."

Kris nods. "Okay. I love you."

Katy chuckles, a little hurt, maybe a trace of amusement. Kris wants to believe there's a trace of amusement there. "I love you too. And seriously, get some sleep. I don't care who you have to cuddle with for it, but just get some sleep."

The funny thing is, he just did. If he's screwed this up, if whatever's going with Adam doesn't work, he can't blame it on exhaustion. He can only blame it on his own idiocy. 

*

As it happens, once he decides to let things go where they will, not force them, not plan them, that's when the world decides to keep them from possibly happening at all. There's flights and a sudden new influx of press and Allison manages to catch a cold in the middle of a heat wave and has everyone running around in fright alternating between wearing masks and staying away from everybody else. The only thing Kris finds worth doing with his completely unhealthy amount of spare time is sleeping, and even that turns out to be irregular, an hour or two on couches or beds his body doesn't have time to get used to, a random nap on a chair, nodding off on Matt's shoulder once. He sees Katy once and they don't talk about it, they just talk about the tour and how Katy's doing and Katy lets him use her as an excuse to go back to the hotel early and also lets him spoon her through the night, which is mighty generous of her but less useful than he expected.

He vaguely considers telling Adam he doesn't have to hold back anymore but it sounds like he's accusing him of something, which he's not, and it also sounds like he's a fifteen-year-old girl, which he's not either, though sometimes it feels like it.

On light of his drowsiness Allison starts hugging him more often, like she's conducting some sort of psychological experiment on him, seeing what it is exactly about sleeping with Adam that Kris finds soothing, and probably also trying to weigh in between the two of them, because she's seventeen years old and at that age you're jealous of everything. Unfortunately for both of them, no matter how often she tackles Adam, she does not smell like him, and that's what it is about for Kris, mostly, he thinks—what it's been about since the show—and Allison gives up after maybe a total of four hours over the span of three days. She says, "You're on your own, Allen," raising an eyebrow and walking away like she's blaming him for something, and Kris calls out, "Hey," behind her, and she wriggles her ass and Kris laughs and forgets to say that it's not anyone's fault, it's just Adam has the freaking busiest schedule _ever_, so maybe it's actually all Adam's press agent's fault. 

In Adam's press agent's defense, or maybe not, sometimes they _do_ do interviews together, and it's not much but it's still good to have Adam's arm around him, taking the edge off the sleep deprivation and calming him down, in that way sometimes you feel relaxed because you're just going through the motions.

On the odd days Kris is free for a while after lunch _and_ they get hotel rooms _and_ Adam does more press than him (though that last one's not that unusual), Kris lies down with the AC up and the TV on mute and the curtains drawn open, letting all the daylight in. It's a different type of sleep, one where he's conscious throughout and more tired afterwards, but then Adam comes in and lies down next to him and Kris rolls towards him, drapes an arm across his chest, breathes in and falls asleep within seconds, and those hours of eyes closed and being awake become a sort of foundation, one more mattress to keep the pea away.

There's no transition half the time, no substantial conversation or acknowledgment of what's going on, but then Adam's usually pretty tired too, and most of the time gets way less sleep at night than Kris does, so it works out. Sometimes they mutter greetings, or Kris asks how whatever interview Adam did went, but if Adam wants to talk about it he will, so Kris doesn't bother, or just groans in question, and sometimes Adam chuckles and settles in beside him and falls asleep, and sometimes Adam settles in beside him and starts talking, the words shaking his throat and his stomach like a massage machine.

It's incredible. It's ridiculous—probably kind of pathetic, even—but it's truly incredible just how _good_ it feels to sleep those days around Adam. Without him the sleep deprivation sometimes turns into a sense of exhilaration that keeps him tossing and turning and half awake through the night, but with Adam there it's all grounded, exactly what he needs to get some perfect rest.

*

One of those afternoons Adam has to leave for rehearsal an hour earlier than Kris, and Kris stirs in his sleep, conscious of Adam trying to slip out of his grip. His arm's sprawled over Adam's chest and his hand's set firmly on Adam's belly, half of it touching fabric, half of it straight on skin, and Adam could get out of it instantly, but Adam's also trying not to wake him, and Kris chooses to pretend Adam's succeeding. Keeps his breathing steady, refuses to let Adam's fingers lift up his own. He lets his head fall forward over Adam's collarbone and presses in closer, slow and steady, and has to bite down on his tongue to keep from mock-meowing when Adam mutters to himself, "'s like a fucking cat," because whatever, he's acting like this on purpose, he deserves the label.

Adam's movement accidentally makes Kris's fingers slip down over his hipbone, hitting denim, and Adam's breath catches for an instant. Kris can picture him, can picture his eyes wide, can picture Adam's face as he tries to work out the logistics of escaping from this when Kris seems to be actively resisting. Then Adam grumbles, "Shit," low and whispery, the 'sh' hissed out through his teeth, and suddenly Kris feels a little delirious, a little too obvious when he drags his hand down over Adam's jeans almost unconsciously and realizes why Adam's being so careful in the first place.

There may be a moment where Kris freezes, maybe, but there's no real way to know because the situation feels heady and new, and Adam's grip on Kris's fingers is no longer subtle, so Kris has to grasp back at him, wrap his fingers around Adam's until Adam stops pulling, until Adam lets his hand go and says, "Kris," and Kris takes a deep breath, "Kris," and Kris hmms, "your hand," and at that point Kris attempts to open his eyes, but the light's too bright and it's better to open his mouth instead, run his tongue along Adam's collarbone, up to his neck.

"Kris," Adam tries again, "your hand's on my—" _dick_, Kris's mind supplies helpfully, but no, it's not there yet, and he thinks that's why Adam doesn't say it—either that or he wants to get out of this before it is, and doesn't want the burden of actually mentioning it in his memory—but Adam's dick is definitely where Kris's hand is going, and Kris wonders briefly what else Adam thinks Kris might be mistaking a goddamn zipper over denim for that he has to point this out like Kris isn't perfectly aware of it. "Kris, come on," Adam pleads, though Kris isn't sure for what, and then Kris is propping himself up on an elbow and covering the last few inches from Adam's neck to his mouth, making things clearer.

He also makes things clearer by unfastening Adam's pants, and then everything _stops_—everything but the last half of the zipper being dragged down, seemingly wailing in the silence.

It's not like the piano incident. It's not like that at all. It's more of a lull, a _pause_, and Kris finally drags his lids open and becomes aware—of Adam's lip caught between his teeth when he pulls back, soft, wet skin against Kris's upper lip and Kris's eyes are drawn to that mouth, that mouth that closes and opens and mutters his name like a last warning, like a parachute.

"Yeah," he replies inanely, meeting Adam's eyes. One of Adam's hands sets on his side, almost on his back, fingertips fluttery where Kris's shirt rides up, and his other hand holds Kris's wrist, tugs at it a bit.

"Kris, seriously," Adam says, and Kris blinks, trying to get used to the light, and Adam grimaces a bit, like he really doesn't want to be the voice of reason, but someone's gotta do it, "don't do something you'll regret," and Kris blinks again, readjusts. 

"Okay," he nods, "I won't," and lets Adam take in a relieved breath before shoving his hand down Adam's underwear, and then everything seems to start moving again. Adam's head, first, like an engine, meeting Kris's mouth halfway, tongue rolling in with no finesse; the hand on Kris's back, too, sliding lower and firmly grabbing his ass; and the whole of Adam, actually, stirring like someone who's still now but won't be for long, won't stay in his place for long—but just long enough for Kris to shove his hand down Adam's pants, cup him through his underwear.

Kris isn't entirely sure how he should go about this, though, and the angle's terrible, which makes it ridiculously easy for Adam to start tugging at the hem of Kris's t-shirt and get Kris to stop and yield and take it off over his head, and then for Adam to just fling a leg over Kris's and turn them both over. 

If he were to, which he's not, Kris wouldn't even have time to freak out because Adam's kissing him again, wet and deep and dirty, and his tongue stays attached to Kris's skin, moving from the corner of his lips along his cheek to his ear, his neck, Adam swaying over him, radiating a certain rhythm, making Kris's entire body reach up to meet him, desperate for friction.

He twists a hand in Adam's shirt and the other in his hair and holds on for a while as Adam makes his way down his chest and presses his tongue to a nipple, then grazes it with his teeth, sending a shiver down Kris's spine. Kris's hips jerk and Adam takes that moment to yank his underwear down and off, and then his hands are traveling up Kris's legs, fingers digging in hard on his calves, his knees.

"Adam," Kris groans, "Adam, please—"

Adam sucks on a patch of skin near the inside of his thigh, and then smirks around it. "Please what?" he asks, and it's the vibration of the words on his flesh that registers in Kris's brain rather than the actual sounds.

Kris forgets to answer, though; Adam's hands pull his legs further apart and his touches seem to be zeroing in, getting closer to where Kris wants them, fluttering over his belly as Adam's head ducks between his legs and he laps gently at the undersides of Kris's balls before rolling them into his mouth, firmly but excruciatingly _slow_.

"Don't you have to be somewhere?" Kris groans, and Adam allows himself a few seconds to laugh, to actually _laugh_ at Kris's impatience and Kris can't say he cares, not when Adam's a solid, active presence between his legs, not when Adam starts licking around the base of his dick.

It's not enough, though, not that, not the slow swipe of his tongue up to the tip, even if Kris thinks he moans at that, maybe, knows a string of swearing crosses his brain and he could just fall apart like this, would let Adam do _anything_ if he just stopped teasing and wrapped his lips around Kris's cock. 

Which he does after what seems like forever, and the image is amazing—Adam's lips wet and shiny around the head, pre-come smeared all over them, and his eyes, Adam's eyes staring up at him, making a point—Kris can only take a few seconds of that ridiculously intense gaze before letting his head fall back—whether to compose himself or to avoid feeling stupid, he doesn't know, but either way he still sneaks in glances, and it's a rush every time he meets Adam's eyes, at first amused and interested, then just _ferocious_, hungry and wild, shutting tightly as Adam's mouth slides over the length of his cock, faster every time.

Then Adam's swallowing around his dick and moaning, low and quaky, and Kris's whole body jerks off the bed, his hips barely held down by Adam's hands and he's coming, long and hard, fists clenching around the sheets and all his energy draining out of his body, leaving him completely boneless.

When he stops panting and opens his eyes, Adam's still kneeling up between his legs, shoving at his own pants, and Kris sits up and helps, not that it's necessary. Adam takes the closeness to crawl over him and kiss him, and Kris works a knee between Adam's legs, pushes up. "I do have to be somewhere," Adam says against his mouth, "soon," and Kris almost blushes when Adam starts riding his thigh.

"Do you want to—" Kris says, not sure of what he's offering, but Adam breathes in and grimaces like he's in pain and says, "No, I really have to go," and grabs Kris's forearm, pushes it downwards. 

Kris nods quickly, breathlessly, and he's not—there's no time for him to be an idiot so he just reaches down between their bodies and wraps his fingers around Adam's cock, hot and heavy under his palm, strange, but something he thinks he could get used to. The angle's still odd, but eventually Kris manages to turn his elbow in a way that doesn't hurt and starts stroking, keeping his eyes on Adam's face, the parted lips, the eyelids trying so hard not to close. He tries to stay aware, track every sound, everything—a whimper when he teases with his thumb across the slit, a particularly deep moan when he twists his wrist on the upstroke—the way his fingertips dig into Kris's waist when Kris runs his teeth along Adam's shoulder.

Adam helps himself, fucks Kris's fist like he wants to finish right now, but hisses like he wants to kill his press agent for having to rush everything. Kris takes pity on him and tightens his grip, pumps harder until Adam buries his head beside Kris's neck and Kris can't watch, but can hear, can feel, can _smell_ the heat, the sweat, as Adam comes apart over him, teeth sinking just below Kris's shoulder, biting down hard on his arm, nails scraping at the pillow beside Kris's head and the skin over Kris's ribcage as he comes over all over his hand.

Adam groans like he's in hell for a while, like this is a terrible time for this, which it is, but then he resurfaces and kisses Kris again, slow and lazy, before collapsing beside him. He looks so young when a few minutes ago he looked filthy, intense; there are some strands of hair sticking to his temples, and his face reminds Kris of having to go to school when you just need five more minutes in bed.

"You're late for your interview," Kris points out, elbowing him in the ribs and yawning.

"You're a horribly mean person," Adam says, moving to get up, "and you're falling asleep again, aren't you?"

"Hmmph," says Kris, trying to straighten out the sheets.

"Is that gonna be a feature, you nodding off all the time?" Adam asks, grabbing a hairbrush, and Kris likes that he's assuming this is not a one-time thing, whatever Adam's reasons for that assumption are.

"Probably not," Kris murmurs, because there's no way in hell their schedules will allow for it, "but I'll keep wishing."


End file.
